xvii, 205 pages : 23 cm

Includes bibliographical references and index

1. A map of the terrain of ethics -- The levels of moral discourse -- The level of the case -- Rules and rights (codes of ethics) -- Normative ethics -- Metaethics -- A full theory of bioethics -- Key concepts -- Bibliography -- Works on basic ethics -- Works on biomedical ethics -- 2. The Hippocratic oath and its challengers : a brief history -- The Hippocratic tradition -- The Hippocratic oath -- Modern codes in the Hippocratic tradition -- The collapse of the Hippocratic tradition -- Codes and oaths breaking with the Hippocratic tradition -- Sources from outside professional medicine -- Key concepts -- Endnotes for chapter 2 -- Bibliography -- 3. Defining death, abortion, and animal welfare : the basis of moral standing -- Persons, humans, and individuals : the language of moral standing -- The concept of moral standing -- Moral and nonmoral uses of the term person -- Moral and nonmoral uses of the word human -- Defining death -- A cardiac definition of death -- A whole-brain-oriented definition of death -- The higher-brain definition of death -- Definitions and moral standing -- Abortion -- Symmetry between definition of death and abortion -- Possible basis for a breakdown in the symmetry -- The moral status of non-human animals -- Key concepts -- Endnotes for chapter 3 -- Bibliography -- The definition of death -- Abortion -- Moral standing of non-human animals -- 4. Problems in benefiting and avoiding harm to the patient -- What counts as a benefit? -- Subjective vs. objective estimates of benefit and harm -- Medical vs. other personal benefits -- Conflicting goals within the medical sphere -- Ways to balance benefits and harms -- Bentham and arithmetic summing -- Comparing the ration of benefits to harms -- First of all, do no harm -- The problem of medical paternalism -- Key concepts -- Endnotes for chapter 4 -- Bibliography -- 5. The ethics of respect for persons : lying, cheating, and breaking promises and why -- Physicians have considered them ethical -- The principle of fidelity -- The ethics of confidentiality -- The principle of autonomy and the doctrine of informed consent -- The concept of autonomy -- Positive and negative rights -- Informed consent, autonomy, and therapeutic privilege -- Standards of disclosure for consent to be adequately informed -- The principle of veracity : lying and the duty to tell the truth -- The change in physician attitudes -- Accounting for the change in attitudes -- Key concepts -- Endnotes for chapter 5 -- Bibliography

6. The principle of avoiding killing -- Active killing vs. allowing to die -- Distinguishing active killing from allowing to die -- New legal initiatives for physician-assisted suicide -- Stopping vs. not starting -- The distinction between direct and indirect killing -- The distinction between ordinary and extraordinary means -- The meaning of the terms -- The criteria for classifying treatments morally expendable -- The subjectivity of all benefit and harm assessments -- Withholding food, fluids, CPR, and medications -- Key concepts -- Endnotes for chapter 6 -- Bibliography -- 7. Death and dying : the incompetent patient -- Formerly competent patients -- The principle of autonomy extended -- Substituted judgment -- Going beyond advance directives -- Mechanisms for expressing wishes -- Issues to be addressed in an advance directive -- Never-competent patients without family or other pre-existing surrogates -- The principles -- The legal standard -- Who should be the surrogate? -- Never-competent patients with family surrogates -- What is the standard underlying this family discretion? -- Key concepts -- Endnotes -- Bibliography -- 8. Social ethics of medicine : allocation of resources, transplantation, and human subjects research -- The need for a social ethic for medicine -- The limits of the ethics of individual relations -- The social ethical principles for medical ethics -- Allocation of health care resources -- The demand for health care services -- The inevitability of rationing -- Ethical responses to the pressures for cost containment -- The role of the clinician in allocation decisions -- Organ transplantation -- Is performing transplants "playing God"? -- Procurement of organs -- Organ allocation -- Research involving human subjects -- Distinguishing research and innovative therapy -- Social ethics for research involving human subjects -- Key concepts -- Endnotes for chapter 8 -- Bibliography -- Social ethical theory -- Allocation of scarce medical resources -- Organ transplantation -- Research involving human subjects -- 9. Human control of life : genetics, birth technologies and modifying human nature -- The human as created and as creator -- Medical manipulation as playing God -- Having dominion over the earth -- Genetics and the control of human reproduction -- Genetics -- New reproductive technologies -- Key concepts -- Endnotes for chapter 9 -- Bibliography -- 10. Resolving conflicts among principles -- Different concepts of duty -- Absolute, exceptionless duties -- Prima facie duties -- Duty proper -- Theories of conflict resolution -- Single principle theories -- Ranking (lexically ordering) principles -- Balancing -- Combining ranking and balancing -- Ways of reconciling social utility and justice -- Translating principles to rules -- Conclusion -- Key concepts -- Endnotes -- Bibliography -- 11. The virtues in bioethics -- Virtue lists -- Professional virtues -- Secular virtues -- Religious virtues -- Care as a virtue -- Problems with the virtues -- The wrong virtue problem -- The naked virtue problem -- Conclusion -- Key concepts -- Bibliography -- Appendix -- Hippocratic oath -- Principles of medical ethics (2001) of the American Medical Association

plus-circle Add Review

comment

Reviews